ow proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God that
I should come into the world."

So you read on page i; what you read on page 191 is this:--

"Just after sunset, about eight o'clock, as this musqueteer stood at his
door with his sword in his hand, when he had done supper, I with great
address came close up to him with a long dagger, and gave him a violent
back-handed stroke, which I aimed at his neck. He instantly turned
round, and the blow, falling directly upon his left shoulder, broke the
whole bone of it; upon which he dropped his sword, quite overcome by the
pain, and took to his heels. I pursued, and in four steps came up with
him, when, raising the dagger over his head, which he lowered down, I
hit him exactly upon the nape of the neck. The weapon penetrated so
deep that, though I made a great effort to recover it again, I found it
impossible."

So much for murder. Now for manslaughter, or rather Cellini's notion of
manslaughter.

"Pompeo entered an apothecary's shop at the corner of the Chiavica,
about some business, and stayed there for some time. I was told he had
boasted of having bullied me, but it turned out a fatal adventure to
him. Just as I arrived at that quarter he was coming out of the shop,
and his bravoes, having made an opening, formed a circle round him. I
thereupon clapped my hand to a sharp dagger, and having forced my way
through the file of ruffians, laid hold of him by the throat, so quickly
and with such presence of mind that there was not one of his friends
could defend him. I pulled him towards me to give him a blow in front,
but he turned his face about through excess of terror, so that I wounded
him exactly under the ear; and upon repeating my blow, he fell down
dead. It had never been my intention to kill him, but blows are not
always under command."

We must all feel that it would never have done to have begun with these
passages; but long before the 191st page has been reached, Cellini has
retreated into his own atmosphere, and the scales of justice have been
hopelessly tampered with.

That such a man as this encountered suffering in the course of his life
should be matter for satisfaction to every well-regulated mind; but
somehow or other, you find yourself pitying the fellow as he narrates
the hardships he endured in the Castle of St. Angelo. He is so
symmetrical a rascal! Just hear him! listen to what he says well on in
the second volume, after the little incidents al